“Oh, it’s not that bad,” Sky says, leading us around towers of books and tall, half-empty shelves and even an old, enormous trunk made of what looks like pure silver and gold.
I can see where they’re both coming from. On one hand, the basement does resemble a catacomb of books rather than a library,with its long, deep blue shadows, bloodred painted walls, and the general feel of underworldly chaos. On the other, there’s also this sense of awe that tends to come when I’m in an old place…like many people have passed through here, many hands have touched this knob, many feet have twirled around this old-as-hell table. It does feel like there are ghosts here and I wonder how much I would have to bribe Amá Sonya to come and tell us about them through her gift that she likes to deny even exists.
And with the little slants of deep afternoon honey light coming in, and the dance of the tiny dust motes in them, and the coolness of being in a room mostly hidden in the earth, well—considering where Sky has spent most of the last eight years, I can see how she’d feel comfortable here.
“This is my office,” Sky says, lifting her arms to show an old desk that looks antique, carved from a red-hued wood with feet shaped like those of a cat’s.
“This is a desk shoved into a corner of the basement,” Sage responds.
“Like I said. My office.”
There’s a small desktop computer on the top of her desk, alongside a framed photo of us when we were little, in Nadia’s backyard some hot summer. Sage and I were both holding baby Sky at once. We were both in our underwear; Sky was in just a diaper. We’re squinting into the sun with big smiles, Nadia’s roses and cosmos and marigolds blooming all around us.
I frown, picking it up. I was four here, I’m pretty sure. I stare at my dark eyes and huge baby-teeth grin, my small frame and plump, pink cheeks.
I was a baby. I was ababy. My mother stole a piece of her baby’s soul and took off without a single fucking word.
I’m not really sure how I rationalized what had happenedbefore. I guess not knowing what she did, exactly, when she pinched that piece of light from my hand…it meant that I could somehow make it so that she was a better person than she was. At one point I even thought that maybe what she took meant she could always find me again somehow. I remember looking out the window of the attic, the one over what would end up being Sage’s bed, where I could see Catalina Street all the way down to where it turns, rubbing the middle of my palm, praying to see her. I imagined her walking back, luggage in tow. I imagined running downstairs and jumping in her arms, screamingMama, I knew you’d come back for me!
“You okay?” Sage asks gently.
I nod forcefully and square my shoulders. “I’m ready to find her now.”
I’m ready to take back what belongs to me.
31
Sage, Sky, and I sitin a circle in the middle of the old-ass and creepy-ass church library basement, and between all of us is a lit candle, making everything glow ever so slightly in orange. Sky has put on her pink cat-eye reading glasses and now she’s glossing over the spellbook while Sage and I wait.
“How long is this going to take?” I ask, checking my phone.
Sky doesn’t answer. Instead, she murmurs to herself as she reads and I look at Sage, who just shrugs.
“Isn’t it some shit,” Sage says, looking around, “that Nadia trained Mama in the old religion? But not us? I always wondered why she never took us to go find the old gods’ footprints.”
“She taught us a few things,” I say, thinking of all the Nadia sayings I’ve heard over the years.There are things older than God. Simple spells are the most powerful. Don’t ever reject a gift from a ghost.
“Very vague things. I knew she was leaving stuff out but whenever I asked her to get specific, she’d shake her head and say it was lost to colonization.”
“We need a representation of the old gods,” Sky announces.
“Uh…” Sage begins, but I raise my hand like I’m in class.
“Thanks to my good-for-nothing ex-best-friend Leilani Rodriguez, I have one right here.” I fish in my purse until I find it—the white and gold shimmering bookmark she’d left on the table at the craft fair when she’d huffed away, thinking she was so much better than me because she represses her negative emotions instead of seeing them all across the sky in the form of lightning and clouds and sleet.
Sky smiles. “You finally got rid of her, huh?”
I shrug. “She dumped me, but whatever. I saw with my own eyes what you two kept saying about her.”
“She made this?” Sage asks, examining the bookmark. “But this is—”
“Stolen from our ancestors’ art? Yes. Yes, it is.”
Sage lets out a long breath. “Damn, that girl has some audacity.”
I roll my eyes, thinking of the way Lani accused me of being a narcissist because of the very thing I am trying to fix right now. “You have no idea.”
“Okay,” Sky says. “We have the rep of the old gods. Now we need something that ties the two people together, and something from the earth. And that’s it, for materials.”
